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10 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to HCI research

(trends of research, rankings, funding, collaborations), while others do not. Some
disciplines are primarily focused on getting grant money, while other disciplines are
less interested, or can even be leery of the influences of outside sponsors. Even the
appropriate dress at conferences for each discipline can vary widely. It is important,
for a number of reasons, to become familiar with the research methods and prefer-
ences in different disciplines. You need to be able to communicate your research
methods, and the reasons why you chose some and not others, in a very convincing
way. When you submit journal articles, conference papers, grant proposals, or book
chapters, you never know who will be reviewing your work. The chances are good
that your work will be reviewed by people who come from very different research
backgrounds, and interdisciplinary researchers can sometimes have problems con-
vincing others at their workplace of the quality and seriousness of their work. But
all of these are primarily concerns with an individual's professional career or with
administrative issues (Sears et al., 2008).
There are more serious, but less well-known, challenges related to interdisciplinary
research. As discussed earlier in this chapter, no research method, approach, or dis-
cipline is perfect. A research project is a series of steps and decisions related to data
collection. For instance, there is a theoretical foundation for the data collection effort,
there is a research method involved, often human participants are recruited and in-
volved, there is data analysis, and then there is the discussion of implications involved.
The development of a proof-of-concept or prototype is also frequently involved.
Depending on the majority disciplinary background of those involved in the research,
there may be different perspectives, value systems, and expectations (Hudson and
Mankoff, 2014). For instance, there could be a distinction between technical HCI
research (focused on interface building) versus behavioral HCI research (focused on
cognitive foundations) which would likely have different expectations in terms of
number and background of participants, development of a tool or interface, and out-
comes (Hudson and Mankoff, 2014)
Different disciplines can sometimes be most interested in, and more focused on,
different steps in the research process. While no one would ever say, “I'm not inter-
ested in the research methods,” in many cases, there are steps that are considered to be
of less interest to people from a certain discipline. And there may be historical roots
for that. For instance, as described earlier and in other chapters, there are large data
collection efforts that use strict controls, in fields such as sociology, and those data
sets are available for researchers internationally to analyze. However, as previously
discussed, no such central data sets exist for HCI and it is not considered a standard
practice to publish your data sets or make them available to others. It is a very differ-
ent model in other fields. That may lead to a focus on certain stages of research more
than others.
(Please note: we expect the following paragraphs to be a bit controversial; how-
ever, we do believe strongly, based on our experience, that they are true.) One dis-
cipline might have an expectation that a specific step (such as research design) is
done “perfectly,” but that it is acceptable to give more flexibility in other steps (such
as the types of participants). The management information systems community of